Healing Tension With Adult Children: A Respect‑Centered Approach

Summary:**

In this episode, Katherine Sellery, a renowned parenting coach, joins James Moffitt to discuss the challenges and strategies of parenting adult children. They explore the impact of emotional intelligence and communication, focusing on fostering respectful and empowered relationships beyond typical power struggles. Katherine shares insights from her experience and research, emphasizing the importance of connection over correction and the role of self-awareness in effective parenting.

Keywords:

parenting adult children, emotional intelligence, communication, power struggles, connection over correction

Takeaways:

• Retaliation, rebellion, and resistance are common reactions to authoritarian parenting.
• Emotional intelligence is crucial in navigating relationships with adult children.
• Connection should be prioritized over correction in family conflicts.
• Parents should focus on understanding rather than controlling their children.
• Self-awareness helps parents manage their emotional triggers.
• Observation without evaluation is key to effective communication.
• Perfectionism hinders creativity and self-esteem in children.
• Acknowledgment, not praise, fosters genuine self-esteem in children.
• Parents should model empathy and compassion to encourage the same in their children.
• Letting go of perfection allows for growth and exploration.

Sound bites:

• "Retaliation, rebellion, and resistance are common."
• "Connection over correction is key."
• "Emotional intelligence is crucial."
• "Let go of perfection for growth."
• "Observation without evaluation is vital."
• "Acknowledge, don't praise, for self-esteem."
• "Model empathy and compassion."
• "Self-awareness helps manage triggers."
• "Foster respectful relationships."
• "Break free from power struggles."

Chapters:

• 00:00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
• 00:00:00 The Three Rs: Retaliation, Rebellion, Resistance
• 00:00:00 Emotional Intelligence and Communication
• 00:00:00 Connection Over Correction
• 00:00:01 Self-Awareness and Emotional Triggers
• 00:00:01 Letting Go of Perfection
• 00:00:01 Conclusion and Resources

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Richard Jones. I am an RN with over 34 years of Nursing Experience, much of that experience working with young adults in the corrections system. 

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Transcript

James Moffitt (00:01.709)
Hello. Welcome to ABC is a parenting adult children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host today. We have a, a very special guest, Catherine celery. Catherine, how are you?

Katherine (00:14.83)
Great, thanks, lovely to be here.

James Moffitt (00:16.353)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for being here. do me a favor and introduce yourself to the listening audience.

Katherine (00:22.166)
I'm happy to do that. I have a conscious parenting revolution. I've been coaching parents for about 25 years. I have three Ted talks and Amazon bestselling books, seven strategies to keep your relationship with your kids from hitting the boiling point. And yeah, I just spent my life helping solve problems and communicate in ways that are more harmonious.

James Moffitt (00:49.856)
Awesome.

Katherine (00:50.638)
Yeah, have a chance of reaching outcomes that are lasting.

James Moffitt (00:55.683)
Well, we have a, a, a parenting, private parenting support group on Facebook. And we started out in 2015 with 10, 10 people. Uh, we had two teenagers at that time. And I told my wife, Katie, I said, uh, I was doing everything I could to keep out of prison. I don't, I don't look, I don't look good in orange and I didn't want a boyfriend. Right. So I was like, Hey, let's see if there's anybody else on Facebook, parents that are dealing with these sorts of things. And so we started out with 10 members and.

Katherine (01:01.356)
Hmm, lovely.

James Moffitt (01:24.225)
Now we have like 1.3 thousand members. So, so there is a need for this. And so we're talking parenting adult children anywhere from 18 to 30, right? That's kind of the age range we're talking about. and there, we, we have members probably that have teenagers, you know, 16, 15, 16, 17, whatever, that are transitioning from teenage years into adulthood. so I'm going to read your little blurb here, off of your pod match.

Katherine (01:26.924)
Yeah, wow.

Katherine (01:37.39)
Yeah.

Katherine (01:48.205)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (01:55.063)
profile says, exploring the impact of emotional intelligence and communication in parenting adult children. Catherine celery could offer valuable insights on navigating this transitional phase. The episode could focus on fostering respectful and empowered relationships beyond typical power struggles, helping parents reconnect with adult children. Katie and I had four children have four children and we lost two of them. we still have.

two adult children ages 30 and 32, I think. Uh, so we're, uh, subject matter experts on the topic of parenting, right? We all are. Hey, you have any kids? have kids?

Katherine (02:25.793)
Hmm.

Katherine (02:35.918)
Yeah, for sure. I have two kids. I have a 30 year old son who's married and I have a 25 soon to be 26 year old daughter who's also married. yeah, they both got married in the last year. So it was a big year for the Celry family. Yeah.

James Moffitt (02:49.155)
Sweet.

James Moffitt (02:57.203)
wow. So, tell me how you got into this. How do you got into your, which the name of your company or ministry or whatever. Yeah. Tell me how you got into that.

Katherine (03:06.417)
Yeah. Conte's parenting revolution. Yeah. Sure. So my husband and I had moved to Hong Kong in 1989 and we lived there for 35 years. So we just recently returned to the United States. So our kids were expat kids growing up in another country. And I was a commodities trader and spoke Chinese. I studied Chinese in university and lived in Hong Kong or actually Hong Joe.

in the 1980s, early 80s. So when we moved, yeah, yeah, spent most of my life in Asia. And when we moved to Hong Kong, my husband and I both living as, you know, busy professionals, he's an architect and started having our own kids and a family and realized we were completely ill-equipped. We had no idea what to do. And that was...

James Moffitt (03:37.891)
wow.

Katherine (04:03.096)
the real showstopper. So we went in search of like skills and support. And in that process, I became a trainer for Gordon Training Institute in Hong Kong and found really my true love. I'd gone to law school, but I'd left after my second year. I had a sister who died and it really rocked my world. And I just couldn't focus on tax law. So my return to the legal

profession never really happened. I became a mediator and I studied conflict resolution with Marshall Rosenberg, who was the founder of restorative justice in the American prison system. I became a trainer for Gordon Training International. Thomas Gordon was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. And, you know, I get to stand on the shoulders of giants and I've loved the work that I get to do because I was needing something to raise my kids, needing some.

James Moffitt (05:00.802)
Right?

Katherine (05:01.422)
to support my conversations when it came to understanding behaviors that were difficult to be around, understanding disruptions, lack of harmony, and knowing that my family of origin patterns I didn't want to replicate. I didn't want to bring forward, but I didn't have any idea what to do. So I did it for me, and I found something that I was able to support other people with too.

James Moffitt (05:27.063)
Well, that's awesome. Yeah. we're, think his parents were hardwired to raise our children the way we were raised. And, Katie and I, we just celebrated 35 years of marriage yesterday, actually the 12th, which was Monday. And, we have, yeah, we have four children. hasn't killed me yet. That's wonderful.

Katherine (05:34.744)
Mm-hmm.

Katherine (05:43.618)
Congratulations.

Katherine (05:48.718)
I'm also married for 35 years.

James Moffitt (05:53.195)
Every day I wake up and I'm still breathing. I'm like, yay.

Now we were like two peas in the pod, like a forest gum said, you know, in his movie, we were very, very compatible and, and, I'm, I'm very blessed to be married to Katie and she's very loving, very tender hearted, very, giving, she, she's a special ed teacher and she has, loves kids. And, so I was like you in that when we started having children many moons ago, I was like,

Katherine (06:02.444)
Yeah.

Katherine (06:18.161)
wow, beautiful.

James Moffitt (06:26.819)
I do not want to raise my children the way my parents raised me. And, my parents were very heavy handed. You know, I was, graduated high school in may of 1980. And, so was a child of the seventies and, dad was a, drill instructor for the army for 26 years. My mother was Austrian. So they were both very authoritarian based, you know, kids are to be seen, but not heard, you know, don't, don't cry or I'll give you a reason to cry.

Katherine (06:39.502)
Hmm.

Katherine (06:45.453)
okay.

Katherine (06:53.016)
Sure.

James Moffitt (06:56.503)
blah, blah, blah, you know, so I knew, I knew from experience that I did not want to, I wanted to learn how to demonstrate love towards my children because they didn't know how to do that. And in, and in their, and in their defense, they probably didn't have that when they were raised as kids either. You know, my dad was one of eight children. His father died of pneumonia back in the thirties or twenties, you know? and so, you know, I think the.

Katherine (06:56.718)
Yeah. Yeah.

Katherine (07:10.126)
Yeah.

Katherine (07:22.51)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (07:26.339)
I think parents do the best they can with what they have, you know, and we all, we all drag emotional baggage into our relationships, you know, our marriages. And obviously, um, when we talk about parenting adult children, sometimes we have to take a step back and we have to discuss parent, you know, uh, uh, marriage relationships and what's going on in that, know, in our, are we modeling empathy, love, compassion?

All of the above, we were remodeling those sorts of things for our children, our marriage relationships. And sometimes we have to kind of do a little self care and we have to get in tune with emotional intelligence and maybe have, you know, family therapy or marriage counseling, you know, whatever we need to do. So, I know a lot of parents are in the midst of a battle with their adult children and the different things that all the different complexities, know, addictions,

communication problems, generational stuff going on. So anyway, that's what, that's what this, podcast is all about is, addressing, you know, we have like 30 or 40 different topics that we, we address on an ongoing basis. And, so anyway, I'm glad that you're here and I'm going to quit talking and, let you, we'll see here's a, I'll just use this.

one of the example questions, how can parents recognize unhelpful patterns with their adult children?

Katherine (08:59.8)
So I usually like to just start with retaliation, rebellion, and resistance, the three Rs, because they show up so often. And when you have resentment flows, it can get really difficult to figure out if the resentment flow is a reaction to something else or if it is in and of itself the issue. So I'm going to just

take a punt and imagine that families may be suffering, adults trying to reconnect or have better connection with their kids may be experiencing the three Rs, retaliation, rebellion and resistance. And those three Rs are so strong that Thomas Gordon was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times around his research that said, when you've used a controlling form of discipline, you activate retaliation, rebellion and resistance.

And Dr. Louise Porter, who I wrote a book together with in her research for her PhD discovered that 75 % of behavioral disruptions and problems in dynamics are a result of the three Rs. that means three R retaliation, rebellion and resistance. Yeah. So those, those three are 75 % of the problem and they resulted from power over authoritarian parenting.

James Moffitt (10:10.595)
Okay. It's retaliation, rebellion and Resistance. Got it.

Katherine (10:25.26)
So if you don't change this or if you don't do that, the threats are gonna happen. No TV, no dessert, no going out with friends, no devices. mean, just all the stuff that parents generally have been found to use to try to get their kids into the behaviors that they're hoping for. What they didn't expect and what they didn't predict and what they didn't know, it's nobody's fault. Nobody tells us any of this stuff.

is that it activates the three Rs and those three Rs can go on for a long time. So in terms of trying to rebuild a relationship, it usually can help to take that step back and just kind of feel into, God, is this one of those Rs? Am I in the midst of one of the Rs? In which case the repair work comes from the adult saying to the kids, regardless of their age,

I think I activated the three Rs because over the years when I was doing my best to guide you, I was using power over and it activated what I now understand to be the three Rs. I want us to be able to, as now adults, heal that rift. And what usually has happened is that person that was growing up,

Was acting in ways that were socially unacceptable possibly or in ways that were not healthy and a parent was scared for their child to be put back on the right track and went about trying to create that shift by a power over approach. So that would be, I think the gist of most breakdowns is that we're experiencing one of the three Rs now years later, potentially. And then

a parent is easily then experiencing that backlash and feeling hurt and also feeling misunderstood and also feeling maybe resentful. So it begins to be like mirror and mirror on the wall and both people in the relationship are beginning to feel that they're not seen, or understood from their perspective. Does that...

Katherine (12:47.608)
Does that kind of touch into maybe a little bit of the group? Yeah. OK.

James Moffitt (12:49.647)
yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think, I think, well, you know, parenting relationships period, whether it's a friendship, marriage, whatever parent child relationships are complicated. Right. And, they can be complicated. And, and I think that parents and children both want to feel validated. They want to be, they want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want to be understood. Right. And in one of the.

One of the things that I've heard from a previous, episode guest who was a child psychologist. he said that, that there's an emptying out process that parents need to take with their children. In other words, children are our adult children are, are, are filled up with. Like these three Rs, you know, the, the, the symptoms of the three Rs or the causes of those three Rs. And he said, until you allow them to.

empty themselves out and communicate with you and tell you what all this stuff is in them. It doesn't matter what you say because they're not going to listen to you. They're not, they're not hearing you because they're so full of the stuff that's been suppressed, pushed down, whatever. Right. And so, so the emptying out process allows them to be seen, be heard, be validated, and to get all of that stuff out on the table so that, so that the parent and the child both can examine it.

And, and deal with it in whatever fashion that needs to happen. Right. And so, so what, what parent listening to this podcast episode hasn't dealt with retaliation rebellion and resistance. Right. I mean, my parents were, you know, I probably was involved in all three of those, right. And, you know, and there was a lot of passive aggressive, behavior on my part, because my dad was really heavy handed. And so I learned at a very young age to stay off his radar. Right. Because.

You know, he had no problems kicking my butt literally, you know, so, you know, so.

Katherine (14:50.442)
Exactly. Well, I this previous guest who used this emptying out process. It's, is, I completely concur. And so if you find yourself in the midst of the three Rs and you recognize that in spite of your best efforts, you may have experienced a way of communicating that has brought about and activated the three Rs that you can now look at the harvest.

and say, don't want this harvest. What can I do to change my harvest? And what I would recommend much like this previous guest is, know, connection over correction, connection over explaining oneself. Cause I think parents have always, I believe really gone into all of their decisions with the best of intentions. We know the road paved with good intentions. And so it's never about the fact that people have wanted to do their best or the fact that they love their kids.

James Moffitt (15:41.571)
Sure.

Katherine (15:50.35)
Absolutely. It's a skills deficit. you know, a little bit of being like, I feel like parents haven't been really exposed to great communication skills. And it's hard to find them modeled in families. It's hard to find them modeled in society. It tends to be that we have to literally go out and figure it out on our own.

Find podcasts like yours, find books, find other people who potentially are not doing just the rewards punishments thing, who are breaking out of that reactive pattern, who are not using power over and are instead trying to find power with and how to acknowledge, see, hear, and understand the other person. So that's a skill to be able to see the presenting problem, which

We call it the tragic expression of the unmet needs. If we take a couple of things for granted, one of them is a lot of people mistake that the catalyst of a feeling that's arising, something that happens, catalyzes an experience inside and they believe that the catalyst is the cause of that experience.

and then they blame the catalyst as if they created the experience internally for them, which is of course not true. It catalyzed, but it's not the cause. So when we know that one cornerstone, we can begin to reflect on our own victim blame consciousness, how we're not being responsible for our own feelings and needs, how when we're activated by something that a child or an adult child or someone else says maybe about us,

that we then have something occurring internally that we are not able to explain to ourselves because nobody helped us. And so we just fall back into the pattern of you make me feel, which of course is not possible. Nobody else makes us feel anything. So that one big thing right there is one of the main things that we can do to help ourselves.

Katherine (18:09.272)
to become more responsible for tending to our inner world, recognizing that the feelings that are arising may have been catalyzed by something someone said or did or behaved in a particular way, but if there were hundred people in the room, every one of us would have a different experience of it. And knowing that truth, that each and every one of us would have responded to the catalyst differently, we can recognize that,

It doesn't cause anything other than it ignites something internally and for all of us, it's different. So what's the difference between my experience of it and yours? My mindset, the way I look at something that is a bad behavior, my own narrative is actually the one that's activating the feelings inside of me. My own family of origin and internal, let's call it wounding that I may or may not have addressed may have been catalyzed.

by this thing that was said or done outside of me. And so when I begin to have that bigger sense of things and I'm not identified with my feelings, the next big thing is to get bigger than what's bugging me to be able to be like a self-cleaning oven, to be connected to my inner world in such a dynamic way that I can literally, you could think of it as turned toward that part of me that's so hurt and be attending to it.

with my own presence, without being identified with it, to be able to say, my gosh, something in me really was stung by that comment. I wanna turn toward that part of me and be with it and let it know that it can be that way for as long as it needs to be. It's a blanket of complete and total self-acceptance. It's a blanket of complete and total self-compassion for me to become

so capable and competent of being compassionate toward my own inner pain such that I can just be with it because I'm grounded in a bigger sense of self that's bigger than my feelings, my thoughts.

James Moffitt (20:37.731)
Hello? I think I lost you. Your video froze up on me.

James Moffitt (20:48.675)
I hate when that happens.

Katherine (21:57.326)
I don't know what happened.

James Moffitt (22:00.223)
I don't know. You, your video froze there for a minutes.

Katherine (22:02.779)
I just, everything froze, but maybe my internet went down. Is that gonna be a problem for you? Okay, good.

James Moffitt (22:10.785)
No, no, no, no, I can actually go in and edit that, edit this out. So that's fine.

Katherine (22:14.705)
Hallelujah. Excellent. Yeah. So that's that sense of being bigger than what's bugging you and being able to connect with that inner thing.

James Moffitt (22:17.859)
All right, so let's go to this next. That was all good. Let's go to the second question. What strategies promote effective communication in family conflicts?

James Moffitt (22:30.669)
boy.

James Moffitt (22:35.521)
rose up again.

James Moffitt (22:50.125)
There you are.

Katherine (22:50.353)
Yeah, I'm so sorry. I'm having I just reconnected to the internet. I can hear you. I hope we're good now. Go ahead.

James Moffitt (22:54.029)
Can you hear me?

James Moffitt (22:59.363)
All right. So, so do me, do me a favor and close down everything except for Chrome. Any applications you have running, like any tabs you have outside of the studio, just close those down. You like, have any applications on your computer that are running?

she froze again.

Katherine (23:18.801)
I'm doing it right now. Yes, that must be it.

James Moffitt (23:22.893)
I lost you. can't hear you. see you. Okay. I hear you now. Whoops.

Katherine (24:22.769)
Okay, I think I closed you out when I closed everything else out. But hopefully now you're okay.

James Moffitt (24:28.717)
Yeah, I'm, I'm the, yeah, the, the live session is still running. do me a, do me a favor and, go to, I want to see what your download speeds are. Can you do a speed test on your computer? Like go to a, go to a, open up a different web browser and just Google speed test.

James Moffitt (24:54.913)
I'm thinking that your internet speed is just too slow.

Katherine (24:59.741)
Okay, go to what?

James Moffitt (25:01.559)
Yeah, you locked up again.

James Moffitt (25:06.627)
Are you there?

Katherine (25:08.053)
Yeah, your call is in another window. I guess I have you in two windows now. So let's pull this one back up. Yeah.

James Moffitt (25:18.797)
Can you, can you do a speed test on your computer? Like Google's Google speed test. Just click the first one.

Katherine (25:22.921)
I love you.

Katherine (25:27.306)
I can try, yeah. I'm not sure how it'll help us in the end if it is what it is, right?

James Moffitt (25:34.837)
Well, yeah, I just want to see what your download speeds are because if they're really slow, that's what's causing this thing to lock up.

Katherine (25:41.075)
right. It's usually not like this. I mean, as you can imagine, I'm on this all the time, but I'm just going through. I had a bunch of things open, so I'll just close all of that so that we are literally just the only thing happening. So bring back here. Yeah. Here we go. I think that'll help us. Yeah. Now this is the only thing open. Yeah.

James Moffitt (25:47.319)
Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

James Moffitt (25:57.463)
Yeah. And that's fine. If you, if you can do that, that'll work. We can do the speed. All right. So we can do this.

All right. Okay. So, so the second question, we're to piece this thing together. the second question is,

We'll see that's that one. What strategies promote effective communication in family conflicts?

Katherine (26:25.685)
So one that we just talked about is the ability to connect and focus more on connection than any kind of correction or teaching or education that you're focused on or literally taking that and making it so important that having your side understood or getting them to acknowledge you or see your perspective is put on the back burner.

the foremost objective of connection is to feel like, I am so dedicated to this relationship. It's so important to me that I understand where you're coming from, that you feel seen, heard and understood from your perspective, that I'm able to reflect back to you. I don't have to agree with it, but that I'm able to reflect back to you the way you see it so that the other person relaxes.

People continue to signal if they don't feel seen, heard and understood from their perspective. And then they have to keep fighting to be seen, heard and understood from their perspective. So if there's something in me that's getting in the way of me being able to hold space for your experience and the way you experienced it, then that's something I wanna be present to within myself, by myself, for myself, not needing someone outside of me to see it. In order to get me to step one,

which is where the other person feels closer because I've given them my time and my understanding that it's important to me to understand where they're coming from. So this might be part of that emptying out process the other gentlemen's or woman spoke to you about, that emptying out process where the other person is able to really open up and shed and shed and shed. And it might feel

hard to hear sometimes, especially if you have a different perspective historically of what you thought was going on, which is your truth. And yet there's this other one who has a different way of looking at it. So that's kind of where I would start is I would always try to encourage people to first form that connection. And the more that you demonstrate your ability to see, to hear, to understand and be present for someone else's truth,

Katherine (28:51.987)
the more you model them the way to do it. And then they may be able to at that point go, but I'm sure you have a different perspective, what's yours?

James Moffitt (29:05.639)
I think one of the things that gets into the way of parents is that we have this picture of who our children are and who we want them to become, right? And the steps that we think that they have to take to become that person, right? And I think sometimes that gets in the way of who our children really are, you know, and who they really want to be.

And I think that's really good that I think it's really helpful for us as parents to just be quiet and give our adult children the opportunity to talk and to express what's going on inside and what they're dealing with, the struggles that they're having, whatever it is they may be struggling with. think it's really good for us to just take a step back and go, okay.

You know, this is your opportunity to share your perspective and, and, and then just listen, try to listen as objectively as possible. Right. And so that's great.

Katherine (30:10.737)
Absolutely. We have things that we say that are roadblocks to communication. When we diagnose or analyze or question even is a roadblock to communication. And at this stage, if the other person is really in what we would call the problem zone and is really hoping that we can be present to their pain, then we have to have attended to our own pain adequately enough to be able to hold space for someone else's.

So I guess you could say the pre-step is that we be present to our own pain, our own aches, our own suffering sufficiently enough that we can now hold space for someone else's.

James Moffitt (30:52.929)
Right. And I think that that's kind of uncomfortable for most parents, you know, because we don't want to be present in that emotional garbage or baggage or wounds or, you know, things that happened to us in our past that we haven't moved past because we haven't dealt with it. Right. And we're so focused on them. We're so focused on

Katherine (30:59.445)
Hmm.

Katherine (31:12.767)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Moffitt (31:19.623)
on molding and shaping and projecting our adult children into who we think that they're supposed to be that we kind of get in our own way, right?

Katherine (31:28.659)
Yeah, well, you've got to handle on this.

James Moffitt (31:33.147)
yeah. And the only reason I have a handle on it is because I, I spent plenty of time screwing things up, you know? but anyway, you know, we live and learn, right?

Katherine (31:43.541)
I completely understand and we get to be compassionate toward ourselves and recognize that that version of who I was at the time, I can love just the way they were. Because I think if you have that atmosphere of acceptance without criticizing oneself, without coming down hard on oneself, without making oneself bad or wrong, if you can create a space for mistakes, then it's easier to go back and look

with compassion, with self-compassion and have that yoke that you would love for someone else to give to you, you give it to you. You give it to you in order to move forward and provide that same space for someone else to make mistakes. It's really not about assigning blame. mean, there's an overall heading to this. No fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame. And I mean, that would kind of be what I would suggest somebody write down on a piece of paper and put it on their refrigerator.

keep it in their purse or their wallet for a gentleman, to just have it with them at all times, to be able to look at it. No fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame.

James Moffitt (32:47.328)
Say that again.

Katherine (32:54.928)
Mistakes happened. Life unfolded. People got hurt. And if I am prepared to allow that this was just an unfolding based on where I was, what I knew, how I could handle things, it couldn't have been any other way. But it can be different now.

And there's the great news is that it's okay. It was what it was, it's okay. It can be different now. And through that yoke of no fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame, we can take a step forward. Let's move past this. I'm dedicated to my relationship with you. It means so much to me. I would love to heal this.

It's more important than me being right about the past or about anything. I don't need to be right. And that's another one I think that we get hung up on is that somehow making a mistake isn't okay when it's not possible not to, especially with families and parenting and all that stuff. It's the hardest job in the world. Really is. There's nothing harder. It's definitely not.

James Moffitt (34:04.471)
Yes, it is. It's not for, it's not for the faint of heart. That's for sure.

James Moffitt (34:14.163)
how does one identify and respond to emotional triggers in parenting?

Katherine (34:20.457)
So when we're activated, and that's where I would say we want to go into an overreaction. the first step for us to recognize is, well, there are a few things that are tell-alls. Am I trying to prove needing to prove is proof of doubt. If I'm trying to prove that I'm definitely already in doubt,

So needing to prove is proof of doubt. It's evidence that I'm in an overreaction. Am I forming alliances, calling everybody I know, trying to get them on my side and make that person wrong and me right? That's another telltale sign of an overreaction. There's reactions, there's overreactions. If I'm in an overreaction, I keep saying the whole thing over and over again. I'm mulling on it constantly. That's not a reaction, that's an overreaction.

So if I'm in an overreaction, it's actually all about me. That event was the catalyst. It catalyzed something inside of me. I am now in a response that goes beyond that event.

James Moffitt (35:31.501)
Right? So.

Katherine (35:32.733)
And if it's going beyond that event, am flooded with all of this judgment. I'm probably in my three-year-old.

James Moffitt (35:43.009)
What, what causes an emotional trigger? When I, when I think about this, I'm thinking, my child came home, because they got suspended from school or they called me on the phone and said, Hey, you know, at three o'clock in the morning, the call said, Hey, mom, dad, can you come get me from jail? Or my child came to me and said, I'm gay. Right. And there, there are events that happen and there are things that are pronounced.

It's not necessarily an event, but maybe our child comes to us says something that just takes us totally out of, you know, out of left field. And we're like, what?

Katherine (36:23.539)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (36:25.037)
So how do, so go a little bit more into emotional triggers.

Katherine (36:29.173)
Sure. So if, you know, any one of those circumstances, if I am triggered, then I'm not able to do something practical. Because I'm already drowning myself. And what I think all of us want to do is regardless of what the news is, difficult to hear news, news where I'm scared for my child's safety, whatever it may be,

is I wanna be centered enough that I'm capable to do something practical to meet what has just come into my field. And if I'm triggered, then not only am I not able to take a practical step, I myself am drowning. So generally, some of the things that we can be aware of is, Marshall Rosenberg talked about two types of consciousness. One is the giraffe and one is the jackal.

And it's a good thing to plug in here because if we're in our jackal consciousness, that's the one that is judgmental. That's the one that's life alienating. That's the one that's critical. And it doesn't give me any support if I allow myself to go into that consciousness. The giraffe consciousness can hear anything through these giant giraffe ears and process it through

The reason he used the giraffe is that it has a 75 pound heart. So it's the largest hearted mammal. And here through the heart, which doesn't change the news, but it changes my response to the news. I can give you an example that he used. He was a teacher and an administrator. And so he was always involved in education with kids. And there was a couple of boys outside who were in a fist fight.

James Moffitt (38:04.364)
wow, wow.

Katherine (38:27.221)
and he ran out of his office to break him up and one of the kids hit him in the nose. And he was furious and he dragged that kid in and he said, you are suspended, it never can happen again, la la la la la. Three days later, kid's suspension is over, he comes back and honest to God, he said the exact same thing happened. And he goes into the hallway, same kid gets hit in the nose again.

And he said, the weirdest thing happened. Rather than the fury that I'd had the first time, I was filled with compassion.

Katherine (39:08.499)
what in the world could account for the difference in his response?

James Moffitt (39:15.287)
Good question.

Katherine (39:16.542)
Any ideas?

James Moffitt (39:19.007)
well, he, I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is that when you, when you step between two kids that are in the middle of a fist fight, you're bound to get hit. Right. And those kids are not necessarily trying to hit you. They're not angry with you. They're angry at each other. And so, so he's kind of inserted, inserted himself into a violent altercation, right. That, yeah. And he's, so he's, so he's.

Katherine (39:41.493)
Well, think that's true for sure. really created the difference for him was that in those days, he pulled out that file and he started reading about that boy. And what he found was that this is a child who just lost, he just lost his mother.

James Moffitt (39:57.899)
okay.

Katherine (40:07.093)
He was so filled with grief and loss, he couldn't find the ground to stand on.

James Moffitt (40:17.229)
Got you.

Katherine (40:17.907)
He was drowning. And his ability to shift in his mind from the jackal to the giraffe is what accounted for his difference in how he responded.

And I think we all probably have those stories in our own lives. And it's so powerful.

James Moffitt (40:38.083)
So he obtained some context, some background information on the child that he didn't have before, which is what enabled him to have compassion.

Katherine (40:45.087)
He did. He did, yeah.

Katherine (40:52.541)
And it wasn't like he went out there saying, I'm going to deal with this differently. He went out just in the exact same way, but from his core, what arose was different. So this is where we can, I just, I love this story. tell it all the time because it, it's so extraordinary to me that my perspective of someone commands how I feel about them.

and then commands the actions and behaviors I take toward them. So if I'm telling my this, just, you know, what Brene Brown would call the shitty first draft, if my shitty first draft of your behavior is such that I am so critical, so evaluative, so filled with diagnostics, so filled with, you know, this, that, and the other thing, that's what's filling me up in terms of my response.

Observation without evaluation is the highest form of human intelligence. So that's Krishnamurti. And I say it to myself all the time. Can I be an expert? Observation without evaluation is the highest form of human intelligence.

James Moffitt (41:55.619)
Say that again slowly.

James Moffitt (42:06.113)
highest form of what?

Katherine (42:07.273)
Human intelligence. Yeah. So do I have the capacity to just be the observer? Or am I going to add my evaluation, calling someone disrespectful, rude, out to get me, nasty? These are all the evaluations. That's actually what fires me up. It's my evaluations. If I want to be an effective

James Moffitt (42:09.054)
got you, okay.

Katherine (42:34.517)
conflict resolution if I want to be effective, observation without evaluation has to be. So in nonviolent communication, you go from observer, this is the sentence structure, observation, the thing that I see you do. So an observation is something I can take a photograph of. It's something I can record and listen to. Lazy is an evaluation, it's not an observation.

Disrespectful is an evaluation, it's not an observation. I can say, when you left your stuff all over the kitchen table, that's an observation, that's what you did. I can see it, I can take a photograph of it, but when I say when you were so disrespectful and left everything on the table, now that's mixing the two. And when you do that, it activates the other person into defensiveness, it breaks down the conversation and what...

ever you thought you were gonna be able to have a conversation about, you can't. You're fired and parents get fired all the time. So I really think essentially this is a podcast about how do I get rehired? I got fired, I don't even know what I did to get fired, but how do I get my job back? I wanna be involved in my kid's life. I wanna have influence. I wanna have deep and meaningful conversations. I want them to see me as a resource.

James Moffitt (43:40.833)
Right?

James Moffitt (43:46.435)
Right?

Katherine (44:00.169)
That's what I think everyone wants.

James Moffitt (44:00.675)
Well, here's, I think here's one of the reasons why we get fired. I think we're so immersed in being the people that are setting standards and we're rulekeepers. like, we're trying to, we're trying to put our, or place our children in an environment where,

Again, standards, rules, you know, it's all around us, you know, whether it's at home, whether it's at work, whether it's out on the playground, whether it's a basketball team, football team, no matter what environment you're in, each environment has its own unique set of rules. Right. And I think as parents, we, we are so rule minded and we're so environment minded that, that, when children do something.

Katherine (44:39.433)
Sure.

Katherine (44:45.301)
Mm.

Katherine (44:50.782)
and

James Moffitt (44:57.431)
that break those rules or, or, or disrupts that environment. It just throws us. We're just three sheets to the wind. We don't know what to do with it. We're like, wait, you know, I told you to pick up your socks, you know, 15,000 times in the last 10 years. And what do I see when I'm walking through the house? I see your socks all over the, all over the house. Right. And so, so I have failed as a parent because I'm trying to get you to pick up your freaking socks and that's, that's a ridiculous analogy, yeah, but.

Katherine (45:24.307)
No, but I understand, yeah.

James Moffitt (45:27.233)
But you know, teenagers are going to be teenagers. Children are going to be children, right? Adult children are going to be adult children. and, and despite, despite all of our many roles is despite the environment that we've got concocted in our brain, that's, that's our perception. It's not necessarily their perception. Right. So, so I think that's where I think that's where we get in trouble.

Katherine (45:49.203)
Yeah, and.

Yeah, and I agree that it's really hard to be in situations where other people are looking at you as though you're not a good parent. Other people look at you as though what's wrong with you that your child is having this behavior. And again, we're back into life alienating jackal thinking and people are jackaling people all the time. We do it. It's part of the human condition. It's why it's so important to understand that there's ways to

move into a Gandhian approach to conflict resolution, which is that ability to be present to the thing that I didn't like that I saw, to be able to talk about it in ways that are potentially guaranteed to keep the other person engaged in the conversation because of the way I address it, which I think is like for us a victory lap. If I can keep that person engaged in a conversation about the behavior that I would like to see them modify.

So conflict resolution often is about, wanna get you engaged in a conversation because I wanna get you to see that this behavior that I see as a problem, I want you to see it as a problem too. And then I want you to have self-started behavioral change, which is like the cornerstone of the guidance approach to parenting, which is what I train people in. The guidance approach to parenting, the cornerstone is to continually provide an atmosphere.

the modeling of the skills, the use of the skills to be able to create the space for self-started behavioral change, where that just goes and changes their behavior because they're not in a reaction. We didn't trigger retaliation, rebellion or resistance. They're not trying to prove that you can't make them do anything because they're highly autonomous and you're using power and control. And now they have to prove to you that you don't have power and control.

Katherine (47:46.569)
So even though they were about to do the thing you wanted them to do, now I can't, because then you'll think you made me do it, and I could never let you think that you have power and control over me, so I can't do it now.

James Moffitt (47:47.084)
Right?

James Moffitt (48:01.133)
Wow.

Katherine (48:02.259)
Right? my gosh, autonomous kids, they're beautiful, but they're self-determined. And when we use language that makes it seem as though they're not choosing it and not using their agency, then they just won't do it.

James Moffitt (48:07.703)
Yes.

James Moffitt (48:16.929)
Right. All right. Here's the last, a last question. How can mothers let go of perfection as their children transition to adulthood?

Katherine (48:26.601)
Yeah. Well, perfection is the poison pedagogy. Of course, perfection is the cornerstone of low self-esteem. Perfection is the barrier to creativity and risk-taking. So when you begin to recontextualize perfection and recognize it as what it is, it's the number one factor that gets in the way of exploration, taking chances, real growth.

James Moffitt (48:28.547)
That's a tough one.

Katherine (48:55.952)
It's not that difficult actually, because when you value exploration, when you value kids that are prepared to risk losing, when you value that it's actually in service to your children's feeling good about themselves to abandon perfectionism, everybody on the planet who's a parent wants their kids to have high self-esteem. And if you're going to cultivate high self-esteem,

One, never praise your child, right? Instead we use what's called acknowledgement, but praise is about my evaluation of your behavior. And so it undermines that child feeling safe to ever do anything that could risk your approval. So the best way to get around that, this is Carol Dweck's work at Stanford University, is to be able to recognize, my God, praise is the cornerstone of low self-esteem.

So never praise, instead the skill of acknowledgement, which is to highlight, verify and acknowledge, not from the place of I'm proud of you, but from the place of, my gosh, I wonder, are you proud of yourself for that? And a child being able to self-reflect on their own behaviors that make them feel proud of themselves. And they do it because they feel so good about themselves when they do it. So we want that self-reflection piece in there.

James Moffitt (49:56.977)
wow.

Katherine (50:24.529)
choose consideration because I like to feel good about myself. And I feel so good when I'm considerate of other people, which is a whole different thing than obedience and compliance and doing what I have to do because if I don't, you're going to hurt me.

James Moffitt (50:42.723)
was very good.

So, I want to read this little blurb that you had on your, your, pod match profile. said listeners might gain deeper understanding and practical tools to navigate relationships with their adult children, fostering connection without power struggles. And I think that's very, no pun intended, very powerful. you know, power struggles are horrible. I don't, I don't think anybody wins in a power struggle.

Katherine (51:05.535)
Yeah.

Katherine (51:11.413)
Dave, with my arm.

Totally agree.

James Moffitt (51:16.835)
So I, uh, um, Catherine, I appreciate your, your, uh, coming on the podcast episode and for your, uh, uh, the, the value of the things that you've, uh, talked about, think it's really good stuff. And I think our listening audience is going to get a lot out of it. And so my, to my, uh, listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time.

Katherine (51:34.965)
Wilson.

James Moffitt (51:41.367)
You can listen to this podcast on captivate FM, Amazon music, I heart radio, Apple podcasts and public radio. I upload the video version of the podcast episode to rumble. It's rumble.com. have a website, parenting, adult, children.org. That's parenting adult, children.org. You can get my contact information, upcoming show schedule, a place to leave a review for the podcast episode.

If you're listening on your iPhone or your iPad on the Apple podcast, if you're listening to an episode, you can write there on the, on the interface, you can just leave a review right there.

you can, Gary told you about review. I just, I just had a brain fart. I don't remember what I was supposed to say at that point. Anyway. Thank you. Thank you everybody for being here.

Katherine (52:32.691)
You're great. Well, this has been such a pleasure. I love what you do. I love the fact that you create this space for people to come and get support. I have a free parenting book.com site where people can go and download seven strategies to keep your relationship with your kids from hitting the boiling point. And I hope that everyone's able to get some support in whatever they're going through.

James Moffitt (52:56.151)
And what's that website?

Katherine (52:57.813)
treeparentingbook.com. Yeah.

James Moffitt (53:01.823)
Okay. Yeah. I want to put that in the show notes, and I will, I'll it now. So it'll be in the show notes. So, so Catherine, thank you for being here. I'm going to edit out all of the, technical. Yeah. The blur, the bloops. Yeah.

Katherine (53:05.631)
Great. Perfect.

Katherine (53:11.893)
Thank you. The Bloops, I appreciate your, I appreciate your compassion and understanding.

James Moffitt (53:22.467)
Okay, stay on line.

Katherine (53:24.53)
Okay.